Nicaragua: Nation of Poets

Travellers have experienced Nicaragua's beauty once again, since the 1980s when the Sandinistas were ousted from power via a series of successful elections. Let's go.

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"We turn outward, attracted by the beauty we see in created things without realizing that they are only a reflection of the real beauty. And the real beauty is within us."

- Ernesto Cardenal

Literacy and poetry workshops established throughout the "nation of poets," as it has been known since the early twentieth century, are well-attended by people whose concerns had been previously unheard. Most workshops are led by government-paid instructors in cultural centers, while others convene in police stations, army barracks, and workplaces such as sugar mills, Valle reports. In these sessions, Romantic and Modern poetry is considered below standard; Ernesto Cardenal denigrates socialist realism, which he says "comes from the Stalinist times that required that art be purely political propaganda." The "greatest virtue" of Cardenal's own poems, says a Times Literary Supplement reviewer, "is the indirectness of Cardenal's social criticism, which keeps stridency consistently at bay." In addition, says the reviewer, Cardenal's poems "are memorable and important both for their innovations in technique and for their attitudes." In this way they are like the works of Ezra Pound, whose aesthetic standards Cardenal promotes.



Review contributor Isabel Fraire demonstrates that there are many similarities between Cardenal's poetry and Pound's. Like Pound, Cardenal borrows the short, epigrammatic form from the masters of Latin poetry Catullus and Martial, whose works he has translated. Cardenal also borrows the canto form invented by Pound to bring "history into poetry" in a manner that preserves the flavor of the original sources — a technique Pablo Neruda employed with success. Cardenal's use of the canto form "is much more cantable" than Pound's Cantos, says Fraire. "We get passages of a sustained, descriptive lyricism … where the intense beauty and harmony of nature or of a certain social order or life style are presented." Pound and Cardenal develop similar themes: "the corrupting effect of moneymaking as the overriding value in a society; the importance of precision and truthfulness in language; the degradation of human values in the world which surrounds us; [and] the search through the past (or, in Cardenal's poetry, in more 'primitive' societies, a kind of contemporary past) for better world-models."

Following his conversion to Christianity in 1956, Cardenal studied to become a priest in Gethsemani, Kentucky, with Thomas Merton, the scholar, poet, and Trappist monk. While studying with Merton, Cardenal committed himself to the practice of nonviolence.

-Bishop Geoffrey Rowell, The London Times, Times Literary Review

Ahnold

Arnie says it's good politics and good business to get green. Daley here in Chicago has been focused on green planning and technology for years now. It's good to see that Schwarzenegger is getting a clue.


Marvell serves up the recipe for Love.


You have not lived until you've seen The Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man.





Arthur Lee's birthday came and went unnoticed this year, usually I listen to Forever Changes on that day. Sorry AL. I'll listen to it in its entirety this weekend.

Have you seen my page at Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks?

A newly discovered William Carlos Williams poem languishing on a wall?

The Dim Schizophrenia of Owls

Angels brew sleep
as pillows weep stellar jam.

Here in the tangle of lawn
misnamed tanagers fold leaves.

Calendars slip filled with thorns.
My mind puddle mends

a clique or brood of dreams
at that midwinter height.

Heaving honey, sleep, shake
the cusp of dark notes

as politicians sit in the shadows
tuning lies.

Imagistes

T.E. Hulme, who died in WWI, was credited by Ezra Pound as author of the earliest poem that could be called "imagist." The Imagists were said to be in "revolt against...careless thinking and Romantic optimism." They attempted to "use the language of common speech... employ the exact word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word." Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, H.D., and T.E. Hulme sought to strip away the florid language used in poetry at the time and expose the core image, so that the reader was left with something solid and memorable, a poem object. Imagist poems were meant to be experienced on a more visceral level. The group was against the moralizing of poetry that used platitudes and sentimentality to convey meaning. Recently I was reading about "Chicago" Imagism. Having never heard that term, but having seen paintings by Ed Paschke, I dug up what info. I could on the movement. Here's a snippet from a fairly recent issue of the Sun Times.

"It's true that as a Chicago art movement, Imagism is essentially dead... not because its exemplars have all passed away (they haven't) or because their work is neglected (Ed Paschke had a major retrospective last year; Wirsum and Nutt are soon to follow), but because the local art scene has moved on. It's hard to find young or even middle-aged Chicago painters who owe much visible debt to Paschke and Co., largely because they've chosen different models or abandoned painting for conceptual and new-media art. "




It's always been interesting to me how the ebb and flow of artistic trends reach a high water mark and then the waters recede and something else entirely new takes its place, even if whiffs of previous artistic currents are somewhat evident. Maybe nothing is new under the sun, but I like to see how iconoclasts cause these ripples.

Lorine Niedecker's poem, "My Life by Water" is practically glistening in its simplicity and unpretentiousness. Its economy of words makes it fall down the page with a surefooted momentum. It doesn't falter and there isn't a sense that there is anything missing or any extraneous words. It's like an engine starting up, or the sight of a single bird in the sky. A simple moment transcribed without overexplanation.

My life
by water--
Hear

spring's
first frog
or board

out on the cold
ground
giving

Muskrats
gnawing
doors

to wild green
arts and letters
Rabbits

raided
my lettuce
One boat

two--
pointed toward
my shore

thru birdstart
wingdrip
weed-drift

of the soft
and serious--
Water

I can't say that this all I require from reading a poem, but I appreciate it's severity and minimal qualities. To take us from there to Whitman's expansive lines takes a long leap into another kind of aesthetic entirely. Not that two camps exist, each keeping to one or the other methodology. But there are two impulses that exist in poets I think. One to include everything and one to strip away to essence. Think about Whitman's catalogs in Leaves of Grass where no detail that crossed his mind, sights, sounds, and smells escaped his description. He tried to capture the entire panoramic vista of American life. Neither is any more correct or true. An entire life's experience could be summed up in a few lines. The tendency to write epigrammatic poems, image heavy poems may be a more effective strategy. Inbetween these two stolid trees of thought is strung the musty hammock of American literature. Realist description, when combined with the influence of more irrational or fantastic imagery from surrealist and dada currents of thought have chopped up language into something really remarkable. I'd like to know what to call it. Any suggestions about what's happening right now?

Out of Fire

Under the angles of protein
naked asteroids gleam

demand to press
flesh with the cigarette

stars thrown like lowdown dice

fierce men, arched at an angle,
will through a door in the east
dream of us

tongue can pleasure
flying shrinking to nothing
wet with electricity

when the stars themselves finally give
out from the trees

like the end of your wick
that becomes a summons

the momentary
wanderings of the
blind

and all their angels flicker.

The City Visible

Reading the work included in the new anthology, The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century, is a great starting point for anyone interested in contemporary poetry, especially poetry being written by mostly younger poets. Jennifer Scappettone, Suzanne Buffam, Srikanth Reddy, John Tipton, Eric Elshtain, David Pavelich, Peter O’Leary, William Fuller, Michael O’Leary, Mark Tardi, Erica Bernheim, Michael Antonucci, Chris Glomski, Garin Cycholl, Luis Urrea, Kristy Odelius, Lina ramona Vitkauskas, Simone Muench, Lea Graham, Ed Roberson, Arielle Greenberg, Tony Trigilio, Shin Yu Pai, Dan Beachy-Quick, Maxine Chernoff, Kerri Sonnenberg, Jesse Seldess, Paul Hoover, Michelle Taransky, Robert Archambeau, Bill Marsh, Larry Sawyer, Cecilia Pinto, Johanny Vázquez Paz, Ela Kotkowska, Jorge Sanchez, Joel Craig, Daniel Borzutzky, Joel Felix, Raymond Bianchi, Cynthia Bond, William Allegrezza, Jennifer Karmin, Tim Yu, Laura Sims, Roberto Harrison, Brenda Cárdenas, Stacy Szymaszek, and Chuck Stebelton are for the most part poets who have either grown up in the city of Chicago or were drawn to this literary nexus from elsewhere. Calling Chicago a literary nexus at first sounded strange to me, but it has become so. Bob Archambeau, one of the poets in the anthology, has written on his blog about the benefits and pitfalls of contextualizing groups of writers based on geographic location. It's interesting to see all this gel.

Chaung Tzu dreamt
he was a
butterfly and
upon waking realized
that he may
actually be a
butterfly dreaming
of being a man.

If I dreamt I
was Chaung Tzu
dreaming of a
butterfly dreaming
of being a man,
would that
man ever realize that
life itself is the
dream from which
we’ll never
awaken?

"What good did the theories of the philosophers do us? Did they help us to take a single step forward or backward? What is forward, what is backward? Did they alter our forms of contentment? We are. We argue, we dispute, we get excited. The rest is sauce. Sometimes pleasant, sometimes mixed with a limitless boredom, a swamp dotted with tufts of dying shrubs.

We have had enough of the intelligent movements that have stretched beyond measure our credulity in the benefits of science. What we want now is spontaneity."

-Tristan Tzara

____________________________

Art is going to sleep for a new world to be born
"ART," that parrot word replaced by DADA,
PLESIOSAURUS, or handkerchief

The talent THAT CAN BE LEARNED makes the
poet a druggist. TODAY the criticism
of balances no longer challenges with resemblances
Hypertrophic painters hyperaes-
theticized and hypnotized by the hyacinths
of the hypocritical-looking muezzins
CONSOLIDATE THE HARVEST OF EX-
ACT CALCULATIONS
Hypodrome of immortal guarantees: there is
no such thing as importance there is no transparence
or appearance
MUSICIANS SMASH YOUR INSTRUMENTS
BLIND MEN take the stage
THE SYRINGE is only for my understanding.

I write because it is natural.

It's finally warming up in Chicago...we're expecting temps in the upper 50s for the next few days. There are so many things going on in this city and poetry is just one. In the next few weeks the anthology The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century will be on bookshelves in stores across the city with new poetry from Garin Cycholl, Chuck Stebelton, Lina ramona Vitkauskas, Sterling Plumpp, Bill Allegrezza, Simone Muench, Chris Glomski, Ray Bianchi, Peter O'Leary, Kerri Sonnenberg, Robyn Schiff, Mark Tardi, myself and many others. Order a copy from your local bookstore or else contact Cracked Slab Books. Also, there are many exciting things coming up in the Myopic books reading series. As soon as I'm fully defrosted I'll be venturing out. Chicago's summer personality is why I live here. . .

Sunday March 25 - Betsy Andrews

Sunday April 22 - Tim Yu

Sunday April 29 - Tony Trigilio

Sunday May 13 - Comedic Poetry with Aaron Belz, Daniel Borzutzky, Joyelle McSweeney, Gabriel Gudding, and A.D. Jameson

Sunday June 17 - Aaron Fagan

The Gypsy and the Wind

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes
along a watery path of laurels and crystal lights.
The starless silence, fleeing
from her rhythmic tambourine,
falls where the sea whips and sings,
his night filled with silvery swarms.
High atop the mountain peaks
the sentinels are weeping;
they guard the tall white towers
of the English consulate.
And gypsies of the water
for their pleasure erect
little castles of conch shells
and arbors of greening pine.

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes.
The wind sees her and rises,
the wind that never slumbers.
Naked Saint Christopher swells,
watching the girl as he plays
with tongues of celestial bells
on an invisible bagpipe.

Gypsy, let me lift your skirt
and have a look at you.
Open in my ancient fingers
the blue rose of your womb.

Precosia throws the tambourine
and runs away in terror.
But the virile wind pursues her
with his breathing  and burning sword.

The sea darkens and roars,
while the olive trees turn pale.
The flutes of darkness sound,
and a muted gong of the snow.

Precosia, run, Precosia!
Or the green wind will catch you!
Precosia, run, Precosia!
And look how fast he comes!
A satyr of low-born stars
with their long and glistening tongues.

Precosia, filled with fear,
now makes her way to that house
beyond the tall green pines
where the English consul lives.

Alarmed by the anguished cries,
three riflemen come running,
their black capes tightly drawn,
and berets down over their brow.

The Englishman gives the gypsy
a glass of tepid milk
and a shot of Holland gin
which Precosia does not drink.

And while she tells them, weeping,
of her strange adventure,
the wind furiously gnashes
against the slate roof tiles.

___________________________________________

Lorca was the supreme master of making the fantastic seem real.

A Brief Cautionary Note About Sacks

Sacks help the user hold, carry, and transport. Do not however place your head in the sack for you may suffocate from a lack of oxygen. You are correct, there is a small amount of oxygen inside the sack. But you will surely grow lightheaded if your head, and therefore both nostrils, once placed inside the sack, breathe this limited amount of somewhat “sackish” air. Sack air is in limited supply and after this resource is depleted you may very well suffocate. Yes, you are correct, some people are known for holding their breath for long periods of time, but not for breathing the air inside sacks. Yes, pearl divers did once practice the now largely obsolete method of retrieving pearls from oysters. Before the beginning of the 20th century, the only means of obtaining pearls was by manually opening oysters found on the ocean floor or river bottom. Free-divers were often forced to descend to depths of over 100 feet on but a single breath, exposing them to dangers of sharks, jellyfish, drowning, and decompression sickness. Yes, I know that, because of the difficulty of diving and the unpredictable nature of natural pearl growth in oysters, pearls of the time were extremely rare and of varying quality. No, these divers were not wearing sacks on their head while diving, of that we may be certain. No, this sack is not a bag, satchel, case, or basket. It could neither be said that this sack is a attache, backpack, briefcase, carry-on, carryall, diddie, duffel, gear, grub-bag, handbag, holdall, kit, knap pack, packet, pocket, pocketbook, poke, pouch, purse, saddlebag, suitcase, or tote. If this were a pocketbook, diddie case, carry-all grub bag, or even an attache, warnings of this type would be completely unnecessary. Also, resist the temptation to use this sack as a flotilla, warning flare, invitation, or campfire. I guess it could be used as a pillow if inflated properly, yes. A flotilla is something you might use to float upon. Ok, flotation device. No, I do not believe it could ever be used as a hamper or as a diaper. My observations resulted in the conclusion that sacks are best used for carrying things like groceries. Well, no one is forcing you to read this why don’t you just stop reading it then? Why don’t you try carrying your groceries without a sack? Why don’t you try it and see what happens? That’s what I thought. Sometimes you need a sack.

Moonprint

Slip into the mist
here chill stillness
bleats across the
grim sleeve of
my hour, you, so there

shower, enzyme of sleep
plasma of dreambeats.

Join hands and abscond
among pregnant ideas
thrum of fir, smell of musk.

Iced with morning frost,
green pine,
invite my nose to dance.

Shrill as news of a death
mind awaken to
red-winged blackbird.

Junta of orange sun
stab the horizon.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow I will be awarded the medal of summer.

What I Keep

Near to dream each sleep
walks as if deep and hours
off to where the blue winds creep, I
know a passage that seems

my mind screen, skin-
deep apoplectic sheen flashes
slivers of pristine time
mimed falsehoods mined

so, find what wind chimes
send as I rhyme, each to
each a spirit dines,
pearls beneath sleep.

Get Your Own, Beautiful

Motel on the moon
number over my head
through the suburbs
just inches from my person
we hover probably not
to these mountains.

Dark cartographer
draw a map
of the great American
tomorrow.

Dusk loves sitting on the porch
so I resemble

counting the truant ocean

and calmly pass the man with an edge.

Officer forever
unravel the world.

A tiny ship is changing clothes,
stop staring at the scene.

And then the quiet post card bled
the heart’s thick beautiful smoke.

Myopia

"Nelson Algren, Wicker Park's great literary giant, once remarked "Chicago is an October sort of city, even in spring". He knew what he was talking about. Year after year spring skittishly arrives on the shores of Lake Michigan in a series of dizzying and ultimately frustrating meteorological peaks and valleys. So deep in winter hibernation are Cook County's citizenry that we are slow to leave our cocoons, distrustful of all sunny February days in the mid-50's, expecting the last blizzard later that very night, the old man's last gasp, the billowing snow and ice sideways blown within the hard bitter wind of our dreams. In February, winter's punishing landscape always lurks in the rearview mirror, just as in October it spans the entire horizon ahead."

-Joe Judd, owner, Myopic Books



Sunday March 25 - Betsy Andrews

Sunday April 29 -Tony Trigilio

Sunday May 13 - Comedic Poetry with Aaron Belz, Daniel Borzutzky, Joyelle McSweeney, Gabriel Gudding, and A.D. Jameson

Sunday June 17 - Aaron Fagan

Present Tense

A thousand noons hatch
at horizon where the
gate sings

I peel my selves
for you to
listen
winds bringing hours
black

You I knew
in a million colors, world

stacks of
nacreous factories

A razor
stubble chin where
constellations crouch

Tiny machines ply
the after-
noon sky, useless as
caves.

Kyger

Alice Notley re: Joanne Kyger...it's interesting when Notley says each poet's poetry should be its own world. It's difficult to not compare poets, but I think the tendency to do so is counterproductive to an astute evaluation of a writer's work. The photo is Kyger in Kyoto, Japan, I think Allen Ginsberg took it.
_______________

"Being known as a glorious and fascinating talker can obscure the value of your work, at least during your lifetime. I certainly hope to have shown that Kyger's work lives up to her conversation, which I also know something about. Kyger's influence on my own practice has been considerable -- and on many other women -- she's one of the women who's shown me how to speak as myself, to be intelligent in the way I wish and am, rather than suiting the requirements of established intellectuality. Universities are frightfully conservative because they love their traditions and especially their language; idiomatic truth can't get born there, or anything that has to be new, not just wants to be.
     Kyger was recently omitted from Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (a very useful book except for the omissions any anthology's prone to). One must assume this is at least partly because she's stayed away from the centers of Poetry's meager power; to wield power would be counter to the logic and even the technique of her poetry, would be for her a spiritually poor choice. But not calling attention to herself, she isn't always included. As her books show, her daily life involves, besides poetry, domestic chores, community service, local jobs in stores, frequent teaching at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, extensive trips to Mexico, and poetry reading trips to the East Coast. This is not at all an insular existence, but it somehow hasn't brought her the notice she deserves. A certain poetry isn't always fashionable. However, each poet's poetry is, or should be, its own world; you cross borders, you get to know it, you read it being there, not bringing a lot of baggage from outside it, and it works. Poetry's supposed to be lived in not assessed. . ."

Congratulations, Martin Scorsese.

A Fable

Of these misunderstandings there were seven,
as the forested Snid glared out from his jungle lair
and considered the tautologies waiting there,
the fruit ripe in their trees was his heaven.

And as the lotus cleft the stone in two
a fountain of leaves from the forest blew
and a shower of gold from an autumn sky
left the moon in a basket of stars.